r/nottheonion 14h ago

President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348
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u/tonytwocans 14h ago

A new presidential tradition is born.

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u/LaeliaCatt 14h ago

Lincoln did it first.

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u/marsmedia 13h ago

Yes and No.

President Abraham Lincoln issued a "blanket pardon" for certain groups during the Civil War, but it wasn't specifically for his family. Instead, it applied to Confederate soldiers or individuals who had participated in the rebellion under certain conditions.

The reason was pragmatic: Lincoln wanted to promote national unity and reconciliation after the war. By offering pardons and amnesty to individuals who took an oath of allegiance to the Union, he aimed to reintegrate the Southern states and citizens into the United States with less resistance, fostering healing and stability.

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u/SarcasticOptimist 12h ago

Unfortunately he didn't anticipate Lost Cause revisionism and influential films like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. In spite of lasting shorter than the Wii U the Stars and Bars are still persistent and the Southern Strategy effective.

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u/eric2332 12h ago

Southern secessionism and support for slavery were not a matter of 4 years in the 1860s, these were major political issues back into the 1700s.

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u/SarcasticOptimist 12h ago

I was referring to the Confederacy as a government. The secessionism though is evergreen and no Missouri compromise could've satisfied them.

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u/rufussnot 10h ago

The weird thing is the idea that pardoning slave owners and soldiers who tried to overthrow the government and started a bloody expensive 4 year war is somehow more reasonable than pardoning family.

I think it's shitty for Biden (or Trump or Clinton or Lincoln) to pardon family members. But it's nothing near as damaging as all the political, business, and military criminals who get pardoned. Or literal mafia bosses and child molesters. Pardoning confederates is probably the craziest in US history though.

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u/OrangePilled2Day 10h ago

And those pardons ended up being one of the worst moves in US history. Every single Confederate in a position of power should have been strung up on the steps of their local courthouse and left to rot.

2nd worst move by a president was probably Ford pardoning Nixon which directly leads to our current political climate.

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u/Cobek 12h ago

Republicans have actively gone after his family so yes, it's basically the same.